Introduction

It is hardly necessary to point out that what passed for trade and industry in the early Middle Ages bore little resemblance to the complex economic activity of the later Middle Ages and more modern times. The sources available to us and the conceptual apparatus of the historian cannot fully interpret the vaguely perceived forms of economic life during the early centuries of the Middle Ages in Eastern Europe. Such written sources as exist mainly tell us about long-distance trade. Within the last forty years, however, these documents have been reinforced by archaeological excavations which reveal fragmentary glimpses of the daily life of the Slavonic peoples. Typical finds in these excavations have thrown light on the various objects which were produced and consumed and this has helped us to reach certain conclusions of a qualitative, if not a quantitative, nature.

The exchange of goods and handicrafts in that early period is frequently referred to in the literature on the subject, but the dichotomy of a subsistence and an exchange economy in all its social and economic aspects is not a straightforward one, and the terms historians are forced to use when studying those far-off days are not altogether relevant.

Until at least the end of the eleventh century the peoples of the eastern and western Slavonic countries lived in a largely subsistence economy. It was a way of life in which the time and energies of small, widely dispersed groups of people, living in clearings in the huge forests, were devoted to producing goods to be consumed within the group.